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To communicate is to move. There is no way around that. Ifwe pick up comprehensive handbooks or introductory textsin movement science (Hong and Bartlett (2008)) we seethat there is very rich knowledge and tractable mathematicalmodels about different aspects of movements. Yet, we findno chapter on communicative movements. While the fieldof speech motor control is a developed area on its own(Parrell and Lammert (2019)), there is no movement scienceof communication proper, which would include whole-body-,hand-gestural-, signed-, and inter-bodily actions.

Goals are a central pillar of everyday mental activity. From finding your way home to solving a puzzle and ordering food delivery, much of human action and cognition is goal-directed. Perhaps unsurprisingly, theories of goals are a central focus in the psychology of motivation (Elliott & Dweck, 1988), in social and personality psychology (Fishbach & Ferguson, 2007), as well as research aimed at understanding factors contributing to task achievement in educational and industrial settings (Ames & Ames, 1984; Locke & Latham, 2002). In this symposium, we highlight recent work emphasizing a goal-centric outlook on learning, exploration, and communication.

Spatial cognition is fundamental to human behavior, but people differ in how they remember spatial relations, variably using body-based (egocentric) and environment-based (allocentric) spatial reference frames. Despite decades of study, the causes of this variation and flexibility in spatial memory remain unclear. Here we show that people spontaneously use different reference frames on different spatial axes at the same time. When remembering the placement of a target object in a 2-dimensional array, Indigenous Tsimane' adults preferentially used allocentric space to determine lateral placement and egocentric space to determine sagittal placement in the same action. This effect of axis was also significant among US university students, whose overall preference for egocentric space was stronger on the sagittal than lateral axis. These findings support a novel account of spatial cognitive diversity and suggest that people across cultures habitually integrate egocentric and allocentric spatial reference frames into the same action.

Children learn powerful internal models of the world around them from a few years of egocentric visual experience. Can such internal models be learned from a child's visual experience with highly generic learning algorithms or do they require strong inductive biases? Recent advances in collecting large-scale, longitudinal, developmentally realistic video datasets and generic self-supervised learning (SSL) algorithms are allowing us to begin to tackle this nature vs. nurture question. However, existing work typically focuses on image-based SSL algorithms and visual capabilities that can be learned from static images (e.g. object recognition), thus ignoring temporal aspects of the world. To close this gap, here we train self-supervised video models on longitudinal, egocentric headcam recordings collected from a child over a two year period in their early development (6-31 months). The resulting models are highly effective at facilitating the learning of action concepts from a small number of labeled examples; they have favorable data size scaling properties; and they display emergent video interpolation capabilities. Video models also learn more robust object representations than image-based models trained with the exact same data. These results suggest that important temporal aspects of a child's internal model of the world may be learnable from their visual experience using highly generic learning algorithms and without strong inductive biases.

Spatial demonstratives are deictic expressions used to point to a referent with language. In the standard view, they encode a spatial proximal\distal contrast between “near” (this) and “far” (that) from the speaker. Several studies have shown that such contrast maps on a perceptual contrast between peripersonal and extrapersonal space. Still, other factors beyond spatial distance influence demonstrative choice. Here we investigate whether the proximal/distal contrast maps also onto a more general contrast between being in physical control/not in control of a target referent. Participants were presented with two circles (red and blue) on a screen. They had to move them with the mouse to find the target circle (the one with two gaps). One circle followed the mouse trajectory (controllable), while the other moved randomly in the center of the screen (not controllable). Unknown to the participants, the gaps only appeared if the stimuli crossed a distance threshold. Importantly, participants had to use stimulus controllability to solve the task. They were instructed to answer by indicating the target to the experimenter using this/that and red/blue (in Italian questo/quello and rosso/blu). Results show that participants used the proximal demonstrative more frequently to refer to the target stimulus when in control. These findings suggest that, similarly to spatial distance, physical control influences demonstrative choice.

What impacts what we remember about objects we have just encountered? Influential theories of learning suggest that more active engagement leads to stronger memories than passive observation. However, it is not clear which aspects of interaction lead to stronger memories, nor what kinds of memories are supported by active engagement. Here we conduct several experiments to investigate the impact of assembling an object on subsequent recognition and recall performance. We found that reconstructing a block tower by copying it part-by-part could impair subsequent memory for that tower, compared to passively viewing that tower. By contrast, when participants initially encoded each tower by building it from working memory, their subsequent recall was enhanced relative to when they held the tower in working memory without building it. Together our results suggest a complex relationship between the nature of our interactions with objects and our subsequent memories of them.

Seeing a person preparing to perform an action and later remembering having seen subsequent phases of the action, but not previous phases. This is what a theory on the role of the motor system in the creation and recovery of memories predicts can happen. We investigate memory for action after viewing an image representing an actor acting on a series of everyday objects. The participants in one experiment viewed a series of still photos of unfolding actions on objects (e.g., blowing the nose), and 15 minutes later they were asked to complete a recognition task. At recognition, participants viewed photos representing temporally distant moments, backward or forward in time compared to the original, along with the same photos seen at encoding. Results showed that participants tended to accept forward photos more than backward photos. In a pilot study, we explored the role of the temporal distance between encoding and recognition. Results showed that when 3 days elapsed between the encoding and recognition phases, participants did not tend to accept forward photos more than backward photos.

Intentional binding (IB) is the experience of temporal interval compression between voluntary actions and subsequent events when the latter are perceived to be caused on purpose by the agent's actions. It can be measured experimentally by comparing the judgments of temporal intervals between either a voluntary act or an external event, and a later sensory consequence. Evidence suggests this might be modulated by the emotional valence of the consequence. However, controversies have arisen over the consistency of the results and the methodology they were obtained with. Here, we aimed to measure this affective modulation using a two-interval forced-choice (2AFC) discrimination task and word stimuli. Three factors were employed: agency (agency and passive), emotional valence (neutral, positive, and negative words), and interval duration ratio determined based on individual values of just noticeable differences (JND). Participants had to judge which of two intervals presented in each trial was shorter. Generalized linear mixed model analysis indicated that there was an effect of IB, but no affective modulation. Dissociation of component mechanisms of SoA are discussed to better understand results and suggest further directions.

Recent research has identified substantial individual differences in how people solve value-based tasks. Here, we examine such differences in the motivational Go/NoGo task, which orthogonalizes action and valence, using open-source data from 817 participants. Using computational modeling and behavioral analysis, we identified four distinct clusters of people. Three clusters corresponded to previous models of the task, including people with different learning rates for cues that signal rewarding and punishing states and with different sensitives for rewards and punishments. The fourth cluster of people acted like naïve reinforcement learners, with their responses shaped by outcomes in a manner that was independent of the state information provided by the cues. In addition to providing evidence that state-independent learning is a common disposition, we show that not considering such learning can dramatically affect the results of computational modeling. We discuss the implications for the modeling of data from heterogeneous populations.

We investigated the human capacity to acquire multiple visuomotor mappings for de novo skills. Using a grid navigation paradigm, we tested whether contextual cues implemented as different "grid worlds", allow participants to learn two distinct key-mappings more efficiently. Our results indicate that when contextual information is provided, task performance is significantly better. The same held true for meta-reinforcement learning agents that differed in whether or not they receive contextual information when performing the task. We evaluated their accuracy in predicting human performance in the task and analyzed their internal representations. The results indicate that contextual cues allow the formation of separate representations in space and time when using different visuomotor mappings, whereas the absence of them favors sharing one representation. While both strategies can allow learning of multiple visuomotor mappings, we showed contextual cues provide a computational advantage in terms of how many mappings can be learned.

Existing models of the basal ganglia assume the existence of separate channels of neuron populations for representing each available action. This type of localist mapping limits models to small, discrete action spaces, since additional actions require additional channels, costing neural resources and imposing new connective tracts. In contrast, evidence suggests that the basal ganglia plays a role in the selection of both discrete action units, and continuously-valued action kinematics. In this work, we model the basal ganglia with distributed action representations, using high-dimensional vectors. This method lends itself to representing both discrete and continuous action spaces. Vectors that represent actions are weighted by a scalar value (their salience to the current task), and bundled together to form a single input vector. This paper provides an overview of the encoding method and network structure, as well as a demonstration of the model solving an action selection task using spiking neurons.

The complexity and unpredictability of a situation might contribute to how much an individual feels in control of their actions. Goal-directed behaviour tailored to different situations is enabled through a hierarchy of situated action control combining cognitive and sensorimotor control processes. We use eye-tracking to investigate the grounding of cognitive processes in the sensorimotor system. Our assumption is that different degrees of perceived control trigger cognitive states that are reflected in eye-movement behaviour. Utilizing a dynamic experimental environment, we investigate whether complexity and uncertainty of the situation are top-down processed into fixational eye movements. The distance to a reference point is affected by environmental complexity in all fixations; however environmental uncertainty is only incorporated in fixations that guide motor control. We discuss that these fixations are only executed under high sense of control when there are enough cognitive resources left to top-down process the environmental uncertainty into gaze allocation.

In this paper, we developed three ACT-R cognitive models to simulate the learning process of abacus gestures. Abacus gestures are mid-air gestures, each representing a number between 0 and 99. Our models learn to predict the response time of making an abacus gesture. We found the accuracy of a model's predictions depends on the structure of its declarative memory. A model with 100 chunks cannot simulate human response, whereas models using fewer chunks can, as segmenting chunks increase both the frequency and recency of information retrieval. Furthermore, our findings suggest that the mind is more likely to represent abacus gestures by dividing attention between two hands rather than memorizing and outputting all gestures directly. These insights have important implications for future research in cognitive science and human-computer interaction, particularly in developing vision and motor modules for mental states in existing cognitive architectures and designing intuitive and efficient mid-air gesture interfaces.

The sense of control (SoC) is the subjective feeling of being in control over an action, influenced by controllability, difficulty and feedback. However, it remains unclear how SoC is formed in multitasking scenarios. We conducted a study to analyze SoC and its impact on task-switching behavior in multitasking scenarios. Participants were required to perform two tasks in parallel while in control of one task at a time, requiring voluntary switching. We found that task-specific SoCs are influenced by the controllability and difficulty of each task. An overall SoC can be explained mainly by these task-specific SoCs. But, the overall SoC did not correlate with the frequency of task switches or the relative time spent on one task. Our analysis indicates that the SoC of a more control-demanding task has greater impact on the overall SoC and even affects the task-specific SoC of the other task, as well as task-switching behavior.

Working memory is widely assumed to underlie multi-step planning, where representations of possible future actions and rewards are iteratively updated before determining a choice. But most working memory research focuses on a context where stimuli are presented simultaneously and the value of encoding each stimulus is independent of others. It is unclear how working memory functions in planning scenarios where the rewards of future actions unfold over time, are retained in working memory, and must be integrated for plan selection. To bridge this gap, we adapted a version of the "mouselab task" in which participants sequentially observe the reward at each node in a decision tree before selecting a plan that maximizes cumulative rewards. We specified a theoretical model to characterize the optimal encoding and maintenance strategy for this task given the working memory constraints, which trades off the cost of storing information with the potential benefit of informing later choices. The model encoded rewards in choice-relevant plans more often, in particular, rewards on the best and (to a lesser extent) worst plans. We then tested this hypotheses on human participants, who showed the same pattern in the accuracy of their explicit recall. Our study thus establishes an empirical and theoretical foundation for models of how people encode and maintain information during planning.

Sense of Agency (SoA) is a core concept related to our experience as intentional agents in our environment. Explicit and implicit measures have been used to study SoA. Recent findings suggest that the most common implicit measure, namely Temporal Binding (TB), may reflect memory processes rather than SoA. Here, we implemented two TB measures and an explicit measure in a novel goal-directed extended action task to better understand SoA measures. Participants either watched or produced dot movements to a target of choice and then estimated the duration between two tones that played either upon movement completion (TB1, akin to traditional TB studies) or based on the start and end of movements (TB2). Participants reported stronger explicit SoA during active than passive movements. Results from neither TB version aligned with prediction based on TB-accounts as a reflection of SoA. We discuss memory-based and scaling accounts as alternative interpretations for our data.

In this paper, we argue that action is involved in the creation and representation of perceptual objects. We introduce leading philosophical theories regarding the structure of perceptual objects in modality-independent and multisensory settings. These accounts omit action as a causal factor that can facilitate feature binding and serve as a structural component of perceptual objects. We argue that action does play this causal role due to the connections between the brain's motor system and perceptual processing as evidenced by neurophysiological and behavioral studies. These data include research on view-independent representations, peripersonal space, and event file coding. We conclude that to omit the influence of the motor system on the structure of perceptual objects is to have an incomplete account of object perception. Motor action is often required to drive the integration of sensory features into corresponding perceptual objects.

Measuring the neural correlates of cognition in freely moving preschoolers presents several challenges. The current article describes a proof-of-principle study assessing brain activation in preschoolers while performing a naturalistic action planning task in the wild. Ninety-two children between 3 and 5 years of age built both a Duplo house and a Duplo spaceship. Both building tasks involve the completion of multiple subgoals within the overall goal. The results revealed an increase in oxyhaemoglobin activation in right DLPFC when planning for the next subgoal, as well as in a standard go/no-go inhibition task, suggesting that inhibition may play a special role in selecting subgoals at these ages. More generally, we demonstrate that fNIRS data can be recorded from moving preschoolers and that a multi-modal set-up including optical motion capture can allow the reconstruction of events of interest. Implications of the approach, as well as recommendations to improve data quality of wireless fNIRS in freely moving toddlers, are discussed.

Action descriptions can include or omit various types of information. In this paper, we are interested in the inclusion of manner in verbs. We use the concept of descriptive verbs, first introduced by Snell-Hornby (1983), and hypothesise that the use of descriptive verbs is reliant on having enough context to determine if the descriptive verb is correct and preferred as opposed to a more general non-descriptive verb. We conduct two online experiments in which participants are asked to indicate their preference for a verb after seeing varying amounts of textual and visual context. Our results show that textual context does not contribute to verb choice. However, we find evidence that videos contain information which creates agreement between participants, suggesting there are objective reasons to choose a descriptive or non-descriptive verb.

It has been suggested that sense of agency might be jointly affected by situational and inter-individual factors. In this study, we examine if personality traits and locus of control beliefs can explain inter-individual differences in both (1) sense of agency and (2) how susceptible people are to social influence in relation to their agency judgments.. To test this, we employ measures for the Big Five Personality Traits and Levenson's Locus of Control in combination with a task based on an interactive computer game. We manipulate sensorimotor agency cues related to action control as well as the social information communicated to participants. Our findings show that while locus of control beliefs are related to differences in sense of agency, neither big five personality traits nor locus of control beliefs can account for participants' interpersonal variance in susceptibility to social influence.

Memory for the QWERTY keyboard has been shown to be a good experimental paradigm to test the relationship between explicit and implicit memory as, despite high typing proficiency in young students nowadays, explicit knowledge of the keyboard seems to remain scarce. In our experiment, we investigate the relationship between implicit and explicit keyboard memory by asking participants to find the 21 letters of the Italian alphabet on a blank QWERTY keyboard (explicit task) and then perform a procedural (implicit) task by typing short paragraphs. Results showed significantly lower explicit (compared to implicit) accuracy. To investigate the role of linguistic context in the implicit task, we compared these results with a subset from Experiment 1 in Ianì et al. (2024), who used a single letter procedural task, illustrating a decline in implicit performance between the two experiments. Our findings suggest the importance of linguistic and sensorimotor contextual factors for procedural knowledge.

The interception of moving targets is a fundamental sensorimotor task involving perception and action. For this task, the dominant approach has been to model the behavioral dynamics using online control laws such as the constant bearing angle strategy, which explain behavior without assuming internal models. Here, we derive a Bayesian model-based optimal control model of an interception task and compare it against the constant bearing angle strategy. First, we show that both models equivalently capture average trajectories, suggesting that observing the interception trajectories in an experiment cannot adjudicate between the two models. However, including realistic levels of perceptual uncertainty, motor variability, and sensorimotor delays leads online control without an internal model to quickly deteriorate in interception performance. We conclude that the empirically observed robustness of the constant bearing angle strategy speaks against a direct coupling of environmental variables and behavior, but instead implies some form of internal model.

The Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) is commonly used to assess executive (dys-)function, particularly in neuropsychological patients. Performance on the test typically yields two types of error: perseverative errors, where participants persist in applying an inferred rule despite negative feedback, and set-loss errors, were participants cease applying an inferred rule despite positive feedback. The two types of error are known to dissociate. In this paper we apply an existing model of the WCST -- the model of Bishara et al. (2010) -- to a novel dataset, focussing specifically on the distribution of the two types of error over the duration of the task. Using Maximum Likelihood Estimation to fit the model to the data, we argue that the model provides a good account of the performance of some participants, but a poor account of individual differences. It is argued that this is because the model is essentially a competence model which fails to incorporate performance factors, and that accounting for the different types of error, and in particular the error distribution during the task, requires incorporating performance factors into the model. Some consequences of this for the broader enterprise of developing normative competence models are discussed.

Understanding how infants perceive real-world scenes and the type of information they rely on when recognizing different kinds of scenes remains unexplored. In this study, we aimed to investigate the relationship between action and scene information in infants. In a preferential looking paradigm, 18-month-olds were exposed to several trials in which they observed a human performing a given action and a subsequent simultaneous display of two scenes. One of the scenes was congruent with the action, representing the environment where the action is more likely to occur, whereas the other was incongruent. Results revealed a significant preference for looking at the congruent scene, accompanied by a longer first visit duration of that scene. Our findings show that the relation between action and scene information, previously reported for adults, is present already in infancy, suggesting a potential role of action information in shaping the construal of scene representation.

The sense of agency (SoA) represents the everyday experience of control over our actions and their outcomes. We posit a new framework that defines SoA as consisting of three main components: sense of control of self, sense of control of the environment, and the presence of a goal. Across five experiments, we test this framework by altering participants' SoA over their actions and outcomes by manipulating the predictability of each. Results suggest that both actions and outcomes affect participants' SoA. We also report, contrary to previous theoretical predictions, that unpredictable outcomes lead to the lowest SoA as compared to actions. Additionally, results from explicit measures suggest that participants do not discriminate between control over actions and outcomes and that this remains true regardless of experimental design or explicit agency question type. Taken together, these results suggest that both actions and outcomes are vital to the experience of control.

We present a neural dynamic process model of an intentional agent that carries out compositionally structured action plans in a simulated robotic environment. The model is inspired by proposals for a shared neural and structural basis of language and action. Building on neural process accounts of intentionality we propose a neural representation of the conceptual structure of actions at a symbolic level. The conceptual structure binds actions to objects at which they are directed. In addition, it captures the compositional structure of action sequences in an action plan by representing sequential order between elementary actions. We show how such a neural system can steer motor behavior toward objects by forming neural attractor states that interface with lower-level motor representations, perceptual systems and scene working memory. Selection decisions in the conceptual structure enables the generation of action sequences that adheres to a memorized action plan.

In hierarchical perception-action (PA) learning, agents discover invariants between percepts and actions that are structured hierarchically, from very basic immediate links to higher-level, more abstract notions. In practice, existing work tends to either focus on the general theory at the expense of details of the proposed mechanisms, or specify a-priori the contents of some layers. Here, we introduce a framework that does without such constraints. We demonstrate the framework in a simple 2D environment using an agent that has minimal perceptual and action abilities. We vary the perceptual abilities of the agent to explore how the specifics of this aspect of the agent's body might affect PA learning and find unexpected consequences. The contribution of this paper is therefore twofold, (1) we add a novel framework to the literature on PA learning, using, in particular curiosity-based reinforcement learning (RL) to implement the necessary learning mechanisms, and (2) we demonstrate that even for very simple agents, the relation between the specifics of an agent's body and its cognitive abilities is not straightforward.

How humans engage in goal-directed behavior within dynamic environments is still not completely understood. Pursuing goals in an environment that is characterized by constant unpredictable changes might be possible through the interaction of multiple layers of action control. A cognitive layer exerts situational control by selecting action intentions, while a motor control layer is responsible for execution. The motor layer informs the cognitive level, about disturbances during execution of these action intentions. We present an experimental dynamic environment, combining motor control manipulation and eye-tracking to investigate visuomotor grounding of cognitive processes. Our results indicate that inefficient motor control prompts strategic shifts in eye- movement behavior, with fixations closer to a reference point under moderate motor noise and further away under increased noise. We further find fixational and smooth pursuit eye movements that can be directly mapped to pursued action intentions. These findings shed light on the changes in action selection caused by noise in the motor system and can be used in a next step to investigate moment-to-moment changes in the pursuit of action intentions under inefficient motor control.

While it is difficult to find and persuade research participants to invest the famous 10,000 hours of practice necessary to develop expertise in any given task, one can more easily commit oneself to such a devoted undertaking. Through autoethnographic observation, the author, a retired semi-professional eSports competitor with no experience or knowledge of the new competitive eSport game Street Fighter 6, documented and livestreamed months of gameplay sessions as he acquired expertise and rose through the ranks of the game's competitive online mode, striving to reach the game's highest ranking of “Master.” The author critically examines the strategies and practices most useful for optimizing learning and performance – illustrating the contributions of reflexivity and reflection that are often overlooked in laboratory experimentation. Overall, this work demonstrates how autoethnographic insights developed “in the streets,” when combined with empirical research in the lab, contribute to a fuller picture of learning and expertise.

Adults have rich beliefs about children's development timelines, and they interpret and react to children's behaviors across ages, holding children responsible to some degree. While children's mental capacity and potential could motivate moral agency attribution, a question remains whether a consistent relation exists between the empirical beliefs about children's various capacities and the responsibility attribution to their behaviors that manifest the corresponding capacities. Here, we tested 361 adults (UK, US) on their folk psychology and moral beliefs about different ages with vignettes that reflect agential control in various domains (motor control, inhibitory control, theory of mind, planning, moral evaluation) combined with several variants of scenarios. We characterized the relation between adults' expectations and responsibility attribution with mixed models. We found that this moral reasoning varies for targets of different ages and the amount of responsibility is mostly determined by age. We suggest an alternative mechanism between capacity- and moral beliefs.

The ability to act purposefully demands formulating intentions in the form of mental representation of actions required to achieve a purpose. Goal-directed behavior also needs apt control of attention for its completion. Here, by using a selective attention task for stimuli presented with an intended/unintended orthogonal feature, we attempted to understand the underlying mechanisms of how our intentions to get self-chosen outcomes modulate attentional and inhibitory processes. Results show a processing advantage for intended outcomes and no disadvantage for unintended or unselected outcomes compared to a neutral outcome. The findings support the role of intention in monitoring and control of action outcomes, as suggested by the dynamic theory of intention.

The research focus on adaptivity in complex systems has propelled an exploration of diverse interactions characterized by state transition processes. However, the investigation of functional variances among processes, rooted in fundamental operands, remains insufficient. Recognizing this gap is crucial for unveiling the constituents of state transitions and their functional boundaries during ongoing adaptivity. To address this, our central focus is on quantifying the functional variance in the interactions of fundamental operands. This approach enables a systematic study of complex adaptive networks grounded in the dynamics of cognitive abilities, where elements adapt and evolve based on cognitive processes. To underscore this point, we emphasize translating ontologically irreducible networks into functionally representable ones at the meso-level, which is essential for assessing their effectiveness. Our active investigation during state transitions explores external interventions, aiming to shed light on mutual influences.

There is a long line of research that has investigated how different kinds of visual information (e.g. optic flow) guide high-speed steering. Additionally, researchers have developed visual control models that capture the relationship between information and steering. Although models have been designed for a variety of steering maneuvers, they all assume that steering behavior remains consistent whether a driver has driven down a road once or numerous times. Thus, models do not address how behavior changes as drivers become familiar with the layout of the road. Our work investigates how drivers incorporate visual information and spatial knowledge to guide steering . We present a virtual driving experiment that examines how steering changes as humans become more familiar with a track, measuring metrics including speed, steering angle, and lane deviation. Results inform the development of a cognitive model that captures the relationship between visual information and spatial knowledge to guide steering behavior.

In the field of medical decision-making, understanding the treatment intentions of clinicians is crucial for effective treatment strategies. However, these intentions are often implicit and challenging to quantify. In this paper, we propose a novel two-module model to infer and implement clinicians' treatment intentions through treatment records. We construct the InfCTI module, which infers intentions and quantifies them numerically, and the ImpCTI module, which generates treatment strategies based on inferred intentions. Our experiments demonstrate that the treatment strategies obtained by ImpCTI reflect clinicians' intentions and the intention values obtained by InfCTI are reasonable. This model has the potential to improve the quality of care provided to patients.

The present study examines distinct inhibitory processes as adults make inferences about others' true and false beliefs while the movement of their finger is tracked in 3D space over time. This reach tracking method allows us to isolate distinct inhibitory control processes while participants make an inference. Adult participants were asked to make inferences about others' true and false belief states, as well as two control trials that differed in the use of inhibitory control. Adults showed a difference in accuracy in responding to others' true and false beliefs, suggesting that even though young children can recognize others' belief states, such performance is not at ceiling in adulthood. Moreover, adults showed a difference in the inhibitory resources necessary to make a response selection processes to accurately infer a false belief as opposed to a true one. Such differences were not present for other inferences that required different inhibitory control. This suggests that adults need specific inhibitory systems to infer others' false (as opposed to true) beliefs, and those systems are not involved in other inferences that require inhibition.

Neural Episodic Control is a powerful reinforcement learning framework that employs a differentiable dictionary to store non-parametric memories. It was inspired by episodic memory on the functional level, but lacks a direct theoretical connection to the associative memory models generally used to implement such a memory. We first show that the dictionary is an instance of the recently proposed Universal Hopfield Network framework. We then introduce a continuous approximation of the dictionary readout operation in order to derive two energy functions that are Lyapunov functions of the dynamics. Finally, we empirically show that the dictionary outperforms the Max separation function, which had previously been argued to be optimal, and that performance can further be improved by replacing the Euclidean distance kernel by a Manhattan distance kernel. These results are enabled by the generalization capabilities of the dictionary, so a novel criterion is introduced to disentangle memorization from generalization when evaluating associative memory models.

A suppression of the cortical beta rhythm is a ubiquitous neural correlate of action observation. However, it remains unclear to which extent low-level action detection and higher-order recognition of actions' kinematics and goals contribute to beta suppression. Here, 24 participants, equipped with EEG, watched videos of kinematically natural goal-intact (Normal), kinematically unnatural goal-intact (How), and kinematically natural goal-violating (What) actions. We investigated the beta suppression at the time of action onset and at the time of action recognition. Across conditions, the beta rhythm was suppressed at action onset above both hemispheres, and no further change in the already suppressed beta rhythm was observed at the time of action recognition. Furthermore, beta suppression did not differ between Normal, How, and What videos. In conclusion, beta suppression is an ubiquitous characteristic of action observation but does not seem to be sensitive to the higher-order characteristics of observed action.

The sense of agency (SoA) refers to the experience of controlling one's actions and their effects, while representational momentum (RM) denotes a bias in the perceived trajectory of a moving object induced by one's anticipation of movement. Research in cognitive science suggests that control over action modulates anticipative mechanisms. In the present study, we question the influence of SoA on RM. Participants viewed two dots, one of which moved horizontally on the screen. Its movement was either triggered by the computer or by participants. In the former case, participants either could freely choose or were commanded on which dot to trigger. Additionally, given the role of affordances in motor control and movement perception, we tested the effect of adding a tunnel through which the dot could pass. The results showed that agency and affordances influenced movement anticipation with no interaction between the two. Freedom of choice yielded no difference.

People readily identify interactions based on resource transfer, such as giving. In the present study, we examine whether adults bind two agents in an interactive unit even if one caused the other to gain a resource indirectly — i.e., as a side effect of pursuing another outcome. Across five behavioral and EEG experiments, we found convergent signatures of social binding (change sensitivity and alpha-band suppression) when adults were presented with an action resulting in the collateral gain of a resource for a passive agent. No binding was observed when the action caused the collateral loss of the agent's pre-existing possession, revealing an asymmetry in how gains and losses are perceived to affect agents. Together, these findings suggest that adults interpret actions resulting in the provision of material gains as interactive, even when these are indirectly brought about.

A vast range of neurophysiological, neuropsychological and behavioural results in monkeys and humans have shown that the immediate surroundings of the body, also known as peripersonal space (PPS), are processed in a unique way. Three roles have been ascribed to PPS mechanisms: to react to threats, to avoid obstacles and to act on objects. However, in many circumstances, one does not wait for objects or agents to enter PPS to plan these behaviours. Typically, one has more chances to survive if one starts running away from the lion when one sees it in the distance than if it is a few steps away. PPS makes sense in shortsighted creatures but we are not such creatures. The crucial question is thus twofold: (i) why are these adaptive processes triggered only at the last second or even milliseconds? And (ii) what is their exact contribution, especially for defensive and navigational behaviours? Here, we propose that PPS mechanisms correspond to a plan B, useful in unpredictable situations or when other anticipatory mechanisms have failed. Furthermore, we argue that there are energetic, cognitive and behavioural costs to PPS mechanisms, which explain why this plan B is triggered only at the last second. This article is part of the theme issue 'Minds in movement: embodied cognition in the age of artificial intelligence'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As seen in other countries, Portuguese youth have been inspired by Greta Thunberg and her actions, which has led to protest marches, sit-ins, blockades and other forms of manifestations calling for climate and environmental change, and a more sustainable future. The most noteworthy acts of mobilization came from the Fridays for Future initiative, a global youth movement involving student school walkouts and strikes. Based on recent research carried out in Portugal, this article focuses on young climate activists. Through data collected via in-depth interviews, we focussed on the discourses of these activists to understand the motivational drivers behind their actions. The interview analysis reveals, on the one hand, a growing sense of ontological insecurity and, on the other, urgency as a crucial element in their struggle. In this sense, urgency is converted into a political value, defining a timeframe for political action, and contributing to the construction of mobilization discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The law assumes that healthy adults are generally responsible for their actions and have the ability to control their behavior based on rational and moral principles. This contrasts with some recent neuroscientific accounts of action control. Nevertheless, both law and neuroscience acknowledge that strong emotions including fear and anger may "trigger" loss of normal voluntary control over action. Thus, "Loss of Control" is a partial defense for murder under English law, paralleling similar defenses in other legal systems. Here we consider the neuroscientific evidence for such legal classifications of responsibility, particularly focussing on how emotional states modulate voluntary motor control and sense of agency. First, we investigate whether neuroscience could contribute an evidence-base for law in this area. Second, we consider the societal impact of some areas where legal thinking regarding responsibility for action diverges from neuroscientific evidence: should we be guided by normative legal traditions, or by modern understanding of brain functions? In addressing these objectives, we propose a translation exercise between neuroscientific and legal terms, which may assist future interdisciplinary research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows that Spinoza went through a drastic change in his view on divine teleology, and that this change is worth paying attention to. In the Short Treatise (KV), Spinoza endorsed a version of divine teleology. As is widely recognized, however, he explicitly rejects divine teleology in the Ethics. I argue that this marks a significant change in his view. To illustrate the significance, I argue that Spinoza consistently maintains the following two premises in both the KV and the Ethics: (1) human beings act on account of some end; (2) human actions are actions of God. While the endorsement of divine teleology is consistent with these two, the rejection of divine teleology results in a trilemma. The trilemma, to be sure, can be resolved by introducing referential opacity to divine action contexts. I argue, however, that it is worth asking why Spinoza revised his view in this way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Active inference describes (Bayes-optimal) behaviour as being motivated by the minimisation of surprise of one's sensory observations, through the optimisation of a generative model (of the hidden causes of one's sensory data) in the brain. One of active inference's key appeals is its conceptualisation of precision as biasing neuronal communication and, thus, inference within generative models. The importance of precision in perceptual inference is evident—many studies have demonstrated the importance of ensuring precision estimates are correct for normal (healthy) sensation and perception. Here, we highlight the many roles precision plays in action, i.e., the key processes that rely on adequate estimates of precision, from decision making and action planning to the initiation and control of muscle movement itself. Thereby, we focus on the recent development of hierarchical, "mixed" models—generative models spanning multiple levels of discrete and continuous inference. These kinds of models open up new perspectives on the unified description of hierarchical computation, and its implementation, in action. Here, we highlight how these models reflect the many roles of precision in action—from planning to execution—and the associated pathologies if precision estimation goes wrong. We also discuss the potential biological implementation of the associated message passing, focusing on the role of neuromodulatory systems in mediating different kinds of precision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though social media platforms have created opportunities for more efficient and convenient civic participation, they are unlikely to bring about social change if the online actions do not propagate to offline civic participation. This article begins by reviewing the meta-analytic evidence on the relation between social media use and offline civic participation. Following this discussion, we present a theoretical framework that incorporates the attitudinal, motivational, and relational processes that may mediate the effect of social media use on offline civic participation. The framework highlights how social media algorithms may shape attitudes on important societal issues, promote generalized action goals among habitual users, and build social capital. We further discuss factors that may strengthen or undermine each of these processes, suggest ways to design and implement algorithms that may promote offline civic participation, and propose questions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As artificial intelligence (AI) technology advances, its application in the field of psychology has witnessed significant advancements. In this paper, with the assistance of AI, 80 university students with depression and 80 university students with normal psychology were selected as the subjects. The facial expression feature data were extracted through OpenFace, and the action feature data were extracted based on a Kinect camera. Then, the convolutional neural network-long short-term memory (CNN-LSTM) and temporal convolutional neural network (TCN) approaches were designed for recognition. Finally, a weighted fusion recognition method was proposed. The results showed that compared with the support vector machine, back-propagation neural network, and other approaches, the CNN-LSTM and TCN methods showed better performance in the recognition of single feature data, and the accuracy reached 0.781 and 0.769, respectively. After weighted fusion, the accuracy reached the highest at 0.875. The results verify that the methods designed in this paper are effective in identifying depressive emotions through facial expressions and actions among university students and have the potential for practical application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to Aristotle in Poetics, dramatic characterization should show the character's moral choice in the form of action, and good moral choice is the criterion of the tragic character's moral goodness. A good or virtuous action, based on Nicomachean Ethics, is an action free from extremes, that is, an action in which the rule of the middle is observed. The tragic character is morally similar to us because he commits a moral error like us, but he is also superior to us because despite his moral error, he can return to the path of virtuous life. According to Aristotle, action and character in tragedy should be intertwined in such a way that they represent the all-moral nature of human life. Therefore, the ideal character of tragedy is morally, and potentially, good; who tries to realize and actualize his moral goodness during the rational, causal, unified and goal-oriented process of tragic design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Speed of visual object recognition is facilitated after active manual exploration of objects relative to passive visual processing alone. Manual exploration allows viewers to select important information about object structure that may facilitate recognition. Viewpoints where the objects' axis of elongation is perpendicular or parallel to the line of sight are selected more during exploration, recognized faster than other viewpoints, and afford the most information about structure when object movement is controlled by the viewer. Prior work used virtual object exploration in active and passive viewing conditions, limiting multisensory structural object information. Adding multisensory information to encoding may change accuracy of overall recognition, viewpoint selection, and viewpoint recognition. We tested whether the known active advantage for object recognition would change when real objects were studied, affording visual and haptic information. Participants interacted with 3D novel objects during manual exploration or passive viewing of another's object interactions. Object recognition was tested using several viewpoints of rendered objects. We found that manually explored objects were recognized more accurately than objects studied through passive exploration and that recognition of viewpoints differed from previous work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is abundantly clear that Vilfredo Pareto held Adam Smith in high regard for his contributions to political economy, yet, in his Trattato di Sociologia Generale, there is no mention of Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments. This study presents a comparison of these two great studies of sentiment, utility and action. It is established that there is a basic compatibility between Pareto's conception of non-logical action in the Sociologia and Smith's distinction in the TMS between regular and irregular sentiments, yet the two thinkers investigated these conceptions and distinctions from very different, sometimes inconsistent, perspectives. We also offer some reasons why there has been considerable debate over an alleged inconsistency between Smith's political economy and his philosophical study of sentiments, but no such similar debate in relation to Pareto's political economy and his sociological study of sentiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractAs environmental challenges increase in scope and scale, new conceptualizations for environmental literacy are needed. Specifically, notions of environmental literacy must move from those at the individual level to those at the group, or community, level. However, the concept of community level environmental literacy is underdeveloped. In this paper, we present the results of a Delphi method survey of experts, gathered to both conceptualize community level environmental literacy as well as address considerations for its measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]